from bblocks.data_importers import WFPFoodSecurity

World Food Programme (WFP) Importers

The WFPInflation and WFPFoodSecurity importers provide access to data on inflation and food security published by the World Food Programme (WFP).

About the databases

Inflation data is available for various countries and indicators and can be accessed through the VAM data portal.

Food security data is available at the national and subnational levels and can be accessed through the WFP's Hunger Map tool.

Basic usage

Inflation

Instantiate the object and call the get_data() method to retrieve a pandas DataFrame. It is recommended to specify indicators and countries to reduce wait time. If no arguments are passed, the returned data will contain all indicators and countries.

from bblocks.data_importers import WFPInflation

# Create an importer instance
wfp_infl = WFPInflation()

# Get the data for specific indicators and countries
df_infl = wfp_infl.get_data(
    indicators = "Headline inflation (YoY)", 
    countries = ["KEN", "UGA"] # use ISO3 codes to retrieve countries
)

# Preview
print(df_infl.head())

# Output:
#    data                 value  source             indicator_name            iso3_code  country_name  unit           
# 0  2025-05-31 00:00:00  3.8    Trading Economics  Headline inflation (YoY)  UGA        Uganda        percent
# 1  2025-04-30 00:00:00  3.5    Trading Economics  Headline inflation (YoY)  UGA        Uganda        percent
# ...

To view the available indicators, use the available_indicators property

indicators_infl = wfp_infl.available_indicators

Food security

Instantiate the object and call the get_data() method to retrieve a pandas DataFrame. You can optionally filter by country using ISO3 codes and chose data at the national or subnational level.

from bblocks.data_importers import WFPFoodSecurity

# Create an importer instance
wfp_fs = WFPFoodSecurity()

# Get the data for specific countries
df_fs = wfp_fs.get_data(
    countries = ["KEN", "UGA"], # use ISO3 codes to retrieve countries
    level = "subnational" # defaults to "national"
)

# Preview
print(df_fs.head())

# Output
#    date                 value     value_upper  value_lower  iso3_code  country_name  indicator_name                             source
# 0  2024-06-14 00:00:00  18095724  19991955     16601037     UGA        Uganda        people with insufficient food consumption  World Food Programme
# 1  2024-06-15 00:00:00  18111164  19992427     16605079     UGA        Uganda        people with insufficient food consumption  World Food Programme
# ...

To view the available countries, use the available_countries property

countries_fs = wfp_fs.available_countries

API request settings

Inflation

You may set the timeout for specific requests (in seconds) when creating an importer instance. The default value is 20.

wfp_infl = WFPInflation(timeout = 30)

Food security

You may set both timeout (in seconds) and retries (number of retry attempts on failure). Defaults are 20 and 2 respectively.

wfp_fs = WFPFoodSecurity(timeout = 30, retries = 3)

Data caching

Data is cached per importer instance to prevent repeated downloads. The cache is cleared automatically at the end of the session, but you can also clear it manually:

wfp_infl.clear_cache()
wfp_fs.clear_cache()